I like to follow the technology curve, thinking of myself as something of an innovator. It was with great enthusiasm that I embraced Friends Reunited, discovering all the people I went to school with, keeping in touch, then letting go again. Some of us took the connection to Facebook, where we laughed at the antics of one another’s kids, looked at pictures of one another and brought home the realities of being middle aged.

It stands to reason doesn’t it? Your best mate has gone from pecs and abs to having a figure like a beer barrel, with a face like an old shoe and it makes your own decline more bearable.
Then of course there is Twitter. The game it seems? To have more followers than everyone else, to somehow validate your existence on the planet. Somewhat early into the game I realised I didn’t actually know any of the people I was following and found it impossible to keep up with the timeline. I deleted my account and started over. Then they changed the way it worked slightly and I had to explain to friends “well you were following me, but now you need to follow me again.”

Marketing…

That’s what it is all about right? I write books and you won’t read them unless you know about them. You won’t know about them unless you know about me, so if I retweet loads of fabulous quotes you notice me and then… But on a planet where everyone is doing this?

So here we all are in a see of white noise. Information technology on overload. People were getting too much, so one by one I switched them off. For some bizarre reason a handful of followers thought I was their salvation, or at least some kind of famous guy worth latching onto. Or maybe they thought I was some guy who knew some famous guy worth latching onto? One went as far as to stalk my family, another issued insults and covert threats of violence. All this in response to status update prompts. I tell you how I feel, you try to kill me? Thanks! Enough is enough, I am totally fed up with it. So the other night, one by one, I defriended, or unfollowed almost everyone. It worries me that some people have taken it personally too.

This morning, I looked at Twitter and there was nothing to do. It took me seconds to scan the time line, without hundreds of links to follow, I get to pursue my own train of thought. This is the first blog I have written in ages. I used to update my website every day and I use my free time to create podcasts. I stopped doing it because somehow Facebook and Twitter seemed enough.

My grammar is rusty and this isn’t flowing quite as easily as it used to. I have been condensing ideas to 140 characters or less for so long, that I am out of the habit of writing paragraphs. Yes, the problem with Facebook and Twitter for a creative, or writer, is that it feels like you are doing something with your art or your skill, when in reality you are not.

Trends…

I like to follow the technology curve, thinking of myself as something of an innovator. It was with great enthusiasm that I defriended and unfollowed almost everyone and I am currently thinking of ways to exit social media entirely. Personal contact is the new way to keep up with friends. Pick up the phone!

Twitter is a self sufficient information resource and probably more useful than Facebook in that membership is not required to read content. People are surprised when people aren’t on Facebook, but it is intrusive and requires membership to access information.

I am currently tied to a couple of streams of information that I cannot get any other way. So, does anyone want to manage my Groups/Pages?

Is freedom from the constraints of the common sense world view, a recognition that:

There is not a something which is here looking out there, that gets from here to there. Everything is only ever here and everything here is me (I am everything but I am not a thing so I am nothing and quite paradoxically I am both of these states yet neither of them.

There are no fixed reference points. I am free when I recognise the “false entity” of “I”, “me”, or “self” is not real. Yet I have quality though it is not fixed. I am not a self. And I am also not the negation of self.

Where “I” am – who “I” am and what “I” am only ever and always changes. Change is the only thing that ever happens and it happens against a constant background of change so all things (everything) that occurs within change is relative and the complexity of this is beyond the scope of human understanding.

Liberation sets the thought stream free from the prison of thinking and from the prison of the idea of a single mind that is separate. Liberation is a recognition of not knowing anything about anything except existence. Liberation can be defined thus: “there is existence”.

Indecently, our science currently relies on made up constants. A liberated scientist would observe existence without having to posit such axioms. Liberation therefore is an absence of proof.

Thinking about existence, only proves existence. Who we think we really are is only ever imagined. In logic perhaps a statement of truth must occur, like this: “whatever has the property of thinking, must exist.”

This cannot be subject to any method of doubt, because it appears as self-evident.

Descartes should probably have just said “thinking is happening.” But when you think about it, in reality, where does thinking exist?

The Cartesian world view assumes the existence of a thinking thing, yet the reference to “I”, “me”, or “self” is a claim that cogito can’t justify.

It is “innate truth” to recognise thought exists directly in experience yet has no discernible fixed location.